Pesto Shrimp with Lemon Risotto

Back in August, when my basil plants were still producing succulent, fragrant leaves, I was making a ton of pesto.  I quickly got tired of chicken pesto pasta, however, and needed a new idea to use up my pesto.  I thought that shrimp would probably work well, and that I might pair it with some risotto.

Pesto Shrimp with Lemon Risotto

For the risotto, I tried Rachael Ray's Lemon Risotto recipe.  The first time I tried it I thought it was too lemony, however.  On my second try, I eliminated the lemon sections, using only the juice and zest of one lemon, and it turned out great with the adjustment.  I then cooked 1 lb of jumbo shrimp and mixed in about a 1/2 cup of pesto, and served it with the risotto.  It works well, and I can see myself making this again next summer when I have fresh basil at my disposal again.

Pesto recipe:

Ingredients:

2 cups packed fresh basil leaves
1 cup fresh parsley leaves
2 cloves gaarlic
¼ cup pine nuts
2/3 cup exttra-virgin olive oil, divided
Kosher salt and freshly ground black peepper, to taste
½ cup fresh grated Pecorino cheese

Directions:

Combine the basil, parsley, garlic, and pine nuts in a food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped. Add ½ cup of the oil and process until fully incorporated and smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

If using immediately, add all the remaining oil and pulse until smooth.  Transfer the pesto to a large serving bowl and mix in the cheese.

If freezing, transfer to an air-tight container and drizzle remaining oil over the top. Freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw and stir in cheese.

Scallops with Tomatillo Sauce from Cinco de Mayo Salsas

During my trip to the Strip District last Saturday, I made my usual stop at Cinco de Mayo Salsas at the Pittsburgh Public Market.  Arturo asked me what I was in the mood for, and I explained that I've been very busy and have little time to cook, so he offered this extremely easy and fast recipe that takes only about 10 minutes!

Ingredients

Sea scallops, large
Flour
Butter
Shallot or garlic
Heavy cream, 4 tbsp
One (8 oz) container of tomatillo sauce from Cinco de Mayo Salsas

Directions

Lightly dust sea scallops with flour and saute with a little butter and shallot or garlic.  Lightly heat tomatillo sauce and heavy cream (do not bring to boil).  Pour over scallops.

I served it over a bed of wilted spinach cooked in olive oil and garlic.  The scallops go well with pasta as well.

Amazingly simple, no? ;)

Scallops with Tomatillo Sauce from Cinco de Mayo Salsas

Click here for more recipes using Cinco de Mayo Salsas, available at the Pittsburgh Public Market during the winter and all around town during the farmers market season.

Jambalaya with Andouille Sausage and Shrimp Marinated in Ranchero Sauce from Cinco de Mayo Salsas

Jambalaya with Andouille Sausage and Shrimp Marinated in Ranchero Sauce
from Cinco de Mayo Salsas

On one trip to visit the Salsa Man in the Pittsburgh Public Market a few weeks ago, he convinced me to try marinating shrimp in his spicy Ranchero Sauce, made with tomatoes, garlic, onions, and arbol peppers.  I thought that sounded like a pretty good idea, but what would I pair the shrimp with?

One of my earliest blog posts featured a Jambalaya with Shrimp and Andouille Sausage recipe from Cooking Light.  I thought it might be fun to spice up this jambalaya recipe with some Ranchero-marinated shrimp, and also to try the recipe with fresh plum tomatoes (plus a little more tomato paste) instead of canned ones.  I also dumped the spicy Ranchero sauce right into the jambalaya along with the shrimp, so was able to omit the hot sauce from the original list of ingredients.  Below is the modified recipe; parts taken directly from the original Cooking Light recipe are in black, while my own modifications are in red:

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped red bell pepper
1 tablespoon minced garlic
6 ounces andouille sausage, sliced
1 cup uncooked long-grain white rice
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1 bay leaf
2 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
3/4 cup water
3 tablespoon tomato paste
6 plum tomatoes, puree 3 and chop the rest
1/2 pound large shrimp
1 (8 oz) container of Ranchero Sauce from Cinco de Mayo Salsa
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Directions

In a large Ziploc baggie, marinate shrimp in Ranchero sauce in the refrigerator for a few hours.

Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add chopped onion, chopped bell pepper, minced garlic, and sausage; sauté 5 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

Add rice and the next 7 ingredients (through bay leaf); cook 2 minutes. Add broth, water, tomato paste, chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, and Ranchero sauce marinate (but hold off on the shrimp for now); bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes. Add shrimp; cook 5 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes. Discard bay leaf. Stir in parsley.

I loved the result, and it added a much spicier kick to the jambalaya than the original recipe.  I think Cinco de Mayo's Ranchero Sauce definitely helped to improve an already solid recipe from Cooking Light!

Click here for more recipes using Cinco de Mayo Salsas, available at the Pittsburgh Public Market during the winter and all around town during the farmers market season.

Grilled Salmon with Creamy Tomatillo Sauce from Cinco de Mayo Salsas

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been cooking a lot with Cinco de Mayo Salsas lately.  It's been a bit of a godsend, as I've been too busy to experiment in the kitchen or tackle more complicated recipes.  During one of my trips to the Pittsburgh Public Market, I was convinced to pick up some Roasted Tomatillo Salsa - owner Arturo's favorite - made with roasted tomatillo, roasted jalapenos, onions, garlic, and cilantro.  He recommended mixing it with heavy cream and them on salmon, so that's what I did:

Ingredients

1 (8 oz) container of Roasted Tomatillo Salsa from Cinco de Mayo Salsas
1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
4 (4 oz) salmon fillet
Salt and pepper

Directions

Mix salsa and heavy cream together and keep warm.  Season salmon with salt and pepper, then grill salmon on both sides until done.  Serve with sauce.

So easy yet tasty!!  The perfect busy girl's recipe.

Roasted Tomatillo Sauce

Grilled Salmon with Creamy Tomatillo Sauce from Cinco de Mayo Salsas

Click here for more recipes using Cinco de Mayo Salsas, available at the Pittsburgh Public Market during the winter and all around town during the farmers market season.

Fish with Coconut-Red Curry Sauce

I was immediately intrigued by this delicious-looking Cooking Light recipe when I happened upon it a few months ago, I believe via a Twitter feed.  It took me a while, but I finally got around to making it two weekends ago and it came out great!  The only problem I had was that I didn't have halibut and couldn't find it at the store, so I used flounder instead, which is a much fluffier fish and harder to cook in a pan the way it was specified in the recipe, but at least it cooked quickly.  The following weekend I tried it again with mahi mahi, but I think the curry sauce goes better with the flounder.  Another change I made was that I used white long-grain rice as opposed to basmati, which worked out OK but needed a little more water than stated in the recipe.  It is otherwise a really delicious rice!  Overall, I loved this dish, and I'm going it add it to my regular rotation.

Fish with Coconut-Red Curry Sauce

Recipe courtesy of:
Cooking Light (get the recipe here)

Macadamia-Crusted Sea Bass with Mango Cream Sauce

Finally, the third excellent dish I made last week was Macadamia-Crusted Sea Bass with Mango Cream Sauce.  I had found this recipe a while ago when R.'s mom bought some sea bass and couldn't decide what to do with it, so I went on Allrecipes.com and this was one of two recipes I found for her (she ended up using the other one), but it sounded so good I saved it to try on my own someday.  Well, that "someday" took a while because ethically-sourced sea bass is not that easy to come by and is definitely expensive, but I recently came across some certified-sustainable sea bass at my local supermarket so I decided to finally give this recipe a try, and the result was delicious!

The preparation was pretty simple, though I wasn't completely sure how long sea bass took "until cooked through" so I went with the 10-minutes-of-cooking-per-1-inch-of-fish heuristic and what I got was perfectly fluffy fish.  The macadamia crust was really awesome even though it didn't really brown for me as much as I think it should have, and I was hesitant to leave it in the oven for too long for fear of overcooking the sea bass.  It was tasty though, which I guess is the most important thing.  The mango sauce was simple but very good.  All in all, a good recipe that I will try again, but perhaps on a different kind of white fish.  I'm thinking maybe mahi mahi.

Macadamia-Crusted Sea Bass with Mango Cream Sauce

Recipe courtesy of:
Allrecipes.com (get the recipe here)

Stuffed Salmon with Sriracha Cream Sauce

Last week I managed to try three new recipes that I had wanted to try for a while, all with excellent results.  First, I made Stuffed Salmon with Sriracha Cream Sauce that was from a photo featured on Tastespotting (i.e., my favorite "food porn" site) a few months ago, which linked to a blog post with the recipe that looked too good to pass up.  The list of ingredients looked a bit daunting at first, but once I got down to making it it's really not that hard.  The sauce is the best part of this recipe, and it is what attracted me to it in the first place.  I mean, c'mon, we're talking about Sriracha here!  For those not familiar, Sriracha is a hot chili sauce often found in Asian restaurants and is typically available in the ethnic foods aisle of your local supermarket.  You can adjust the spiciness of this Sriracha cream sauce by adjusting the amount of Sriracha you mix in.  The recipe actually made far more sauce that was needed for two filets of salmon, so next time I might cut that down a bit, but the sauce is really amazing so it's certainly possible to save the sauce for other dishes.  I'm thinking it would make a great dip for tortilla chips!

Stuffed Salmon with Sriracha Cream Sauce

My photo is definitely nowhere near the quality of the one from the original recipe, and I can only hope that someday my pictures will turn out as good as theirs!

Recipe courtesy of:
The Boogie Blog (get the recipe here)

Blackened Tilapia Baja Tacos

While my eating adventures last week took me to some of my favorite dining establishments in town (Bite Bistro, Franktuary, and Braddock's American Brasserie), I also tried two new recipes at home.  One was the Blackened Tilapia Baja Tacos from Cooking Light, one of my favorite sources for simple, delicious, and healthy recipes.

Blackened Tilapia Baja Tacos

The blackened tilapia was full of spice, and the jalapeno-lime sauce was a refreshing complement to the fish.  The onion and avocado slices complete the meal.  The drippy sauce makes this a pretty messy taco meal, so I probably won't be bringing these tacos to work anytime soon, unless I wrap it completely in a large tortilla or skip the wrap altogether and serve it over rice.  On another note, I recently discovered an article on how to keep avocados from turning brown which is a handy tip for this recipe.

Recipe courtesy of:
Cooking Light (get the recipe here)

Palace Cafe's Shrimp Tchefuncte (Part 2: The Recipe)

Read Part 1: The Back Story

My good friend from graduate school, along with her husband and little boy, came to visit me in Pittsburgh last weekend on their way from Cincinnati to New York.  They had planned to arrive around dinner time on Saturday, and because their kid was nursing a cold, they wanted a low-key evening. So I decided to flex my cooking muscles and prepare dinner for everyone.

Having learned from the minor disaster that was Sunday Brunch a couple of weeks ago, I decided I would make something I've successfully cooked before.  I didn't have time to carefully look through my two very full binders of recipes, so I went with one of my all-time favorites:  Palace Café's Shrimp Tchefuncte.

Shrimp Tchefuncte

As I mentioned in my last post, about two years ago I had found several versions of this recipe online, and I had blogged about my attempt at making it.  The very next day, a wonderful staff member at Palace Cafe actually commented on my blog and posted the actual recipe, with some interesting tidbits about the dish. I will post her comment verbatim here:

My name is Ali and I work for Dickie Brennan's Palace Cafe. So glad that you enjoy our Shrimp Tchefuncte. Looks like you did a great job repicating it. Just in case you were looking the original recipe, here it is. You can also find it on our website where we share many other recipes: Rice Pilaf 2 oz Butter 3 C Converted/Louisiana Popcorn Rice 1 med Onion, diced 6 C Chicken Stock Salt and Pepper In a 5 quart sauce pan, melt butter and add diced onions and rice. Stir constantly until rice and onions brown. Add chicken stock, then bring to a boil. Stir, reduce heat to low and simmer. Cover and cook for approximately 20 minutes. Check for firmness, uncover and let stand for 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Meunière Sauce 1 tsp Black Peppercorns 8 Tbsp Heavy Whipping Cream 3 Lemons, peeled and quartered 2 lbs Unsalted Butter, room temperature 3 Tbsp Crystal Hot Sauce ¼ tsp Salt and White Pepper 7 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce In a large sauce pan, combine peppercorns, lemons, hot sauce and Worcestershire sauce over low heat. Reduce by 2/3. Add whipping cream and reduce by ½, stirring constantly. As you stir, press gently on the lemon quarters to release the juices. Slowly add the butter by pinching off 2-3 ounces at a time and squeezing it through your fingers into the sauce pan, still stirring constantly (this is called “mounting the butter”). As you add the last of the butter, remove your pan from heat; continue to stir. Add salt and pepper to taste. Strain through a fine strainer or china cap. Cover and set aside. Sautéed Shrimp 3 C Domestic Mushrooms 3 C Green Onions 60 Shrimp 6 tsp Butter Salt and Pepper Wash (in cold water) and season shrimp with salt and pepper (we use our house Creole seasoning in the restaurant). Melt butter in a medium sauté pan, then add shrimp, green onions and mushrooms. Cook over medium heat for 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly until shrimp turn pink. When ready to serve, add meunière sauce and heat. Serving Instructions: Pack rice in a cup (a shallow coffee cup works well). Invert the cup over the rim of your plate and lift slowly. Spoon Shrimp Tchefuncte around ¾ of the rice. **Food for Thought** The Tchefuncte River, located north of New Orleans was named after an Indian tribe that once inhabited the area. Meunière: French for “miller’s wife”, refers to a style of cooking whereby food (usually fish) is seasoned, lightly dusted with flour and sautéed in butter. The sauce made from these drippings is then combined with lemon juice and parsley

[UPDATE 4/13/2011: Palace Café was so sweet to post this recipe as well as some really useful tips on their own blog after reading my post, and then took the time to let me know!  See why I just loooove Palace Café??]


It was actually pretty close to how I had made it based on other recipes I had found online.  I had made this a number of times now over the past two years, with generally successful results.  When I make this at home now, I do make one important modification to the original recipe: As much as I think the real thing would be out-of-this-world delicious, I just can't bear to put two POUNDS of butter - that's eight sticks!! - into anything I make, particularly because I'm the one stuck with all the leftovers and that's a whole lotta butter for one person.  (There's still a part of me that wonders if the butter amount is just a typo! Actually, I kind of hope so! - UPDATE: Palace Café has confirmed the amount is NOT a typo. Yowza! Now I know why it tastes so good!)  So when I make this at home, I reduce the amount of butter in the sauce significantly, to about 2-4 tbsp (to taste), which I'm sure affects the flavor, but it's still quite good and I'm happy with it.

As I'm stirring the sauce, I try not to press too hard on the lemons for the juice.  I have learned the hard way that the sauce can quickly turn bitter if it is too lemony (though my using less butter could have thrown off the lemon-butter balance, causing the bitterness).  I adjust the proportions of the other ingredients as I go along to make sure all the flavors are well balanced.  The meunière sauce is what makes the dish, so it's important to get it right.

On Palace Café's Facebook page is a professional photo of the real deal, which obviously looks fantastic and much more appetizing than my homemade version. ;)  Their sauce is darker, which is curious, and the rice is different because I actually just used regular long-grain rice, which I readily had at home, rather than popcorn rice (a.k.a. American basmati rice or della rice).

As an aside, I will be back in New Orleans in January 2013.  You know where I'll be eating! :)

Seared Scallops with Cauliflower Puree

Yes, another seafood meal this week.  This recipe is from the March issue of Cooking Light (see below for the link to the recipe).  It took about half an hour to make and tastes fantastic!  I probably didn't sear the scallops quite as much as I should have, but my smoke detector kept going off from just heating the oil so I had to lower the heat somewhat. :-/

Here's a close-up.  For these pictures, I used a full-spectrum studio light (was too dark outside to take advantage of natural lighting) and placed the camera on a tripod with it set on a timer.  I think this really helped with the lighting and blur issues.  Apparently I cannot keep my tiny hands steady with an exposure time of 1/60 seconds (ISO 800), but the tripod/timer combo allowed this picture taken at a 1/15-second exposure and an ISO speed of 400 (no flash) to turn out much better.  Why I didn't think of doing this earlier, I don't know!  Now to get my remote control working again so I don't have to wait 10 seconds every time I try to take a picture!

Recipe courtesy of:

Cooking Light (get the recipe here)

Shrimp Arrabbiata

I really love this recipe.  I only discovered it three months ago and have made it at least five times.  Added bonus: It's super quick and easy to make!

Dinner is ready!

Recipe courtesy of:

Cooking Light (Get the recipe here)